"The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There is no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."
— Arundhati Roy

16 December 2012

Can I hide somewhere until it's over?

17 December 2012: This post is edited to reflect additional Google searches. I have also added citations to peer-reviewed reports and studies.
___________

Can I hide somewhere until it's over?

In the last twenty-four hours, various pages on this blog were found after Google searches for the terms

are autistic people more likely to kill

commonaility of mass murderers shootings autism aspergers

how many mass shooters were autistic?

aspergers mass murderers

are mass murderers autistic

percentage of all murders committed by people with autism

autistic violent "home anymore"

how often do autistics commit crimes later in life

has there ever been a mass murderer with aspergers

autism mass shootings

how many autistic people commit murders

are people with autism dangerous

how many of 2012 mass murderers had aspergers?

Part of me is horrified and appalled that people are searching for these phrases and finding this website. And part of me is thankful that they're finding and clicking through to this site instead of somewhere else.

Here are some facts.

Autistics are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

When Autistics commit crimes, being Autistic rarely has anything to do with the actual crime.

Autism is not violence.

Mental health disabilities aren't violence.

People with mental health disabilities are also more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

Here are some citations. (N.B. I use the language of the study authors to describe their results.) The links should be to copies of the PDFs where I was able to obtain them, and to the abstract where I wasn't.

This study also reiterates that most Autistics are law-abiding people. (Nachum Katz and Zvi Zemishlany, 2006.)

This study actually found a prevalence rate of violence of 2.7% in people with Asperger syndrome, which is below the prevalence rate of violence in the general population. (M. Ghaziuddin, Luke Tsai, and N. Ghaziuddin, 1991.)

This study found that adults with "severe mental illness" are eleven times more likely than non-disabled adults to be victimized by crime. (Linda A. Teplin, Gary M. McClelland, Karen M. Abram, and Dana A. Weiner, 2005.)

This study reviewed a number of other studies to demonstrate significantly higher levels of violence and abuse against people with developmental disabilities--which includes Autistic people--than the general population. (Joan R. Petersilia, 2001.)

This study found that "the mentally ill" are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence, and questions the supposed link between "mental illness" and violence. (Heather Stuart, 2003.)

Here are some answers to those Google searches.

are autistic people more likely to kill

No. We're less likely to kill.

commonaility of mass murderers shootings autism aspergers

Not common, not by a long shot.

how many mass shooters were autistic?

No idea. Does it matter?

aspergers mass murderers

Asperger's doesn't make someone a mass murderer. Ever.

are mass murderers autistic

I'm sure there have been Autistic mass murderers. There have also been Muslim and Black and Women mass murderers. That doesn't make all mass murderers Muslim or Black or Women, nor does it make them all Autistic. And being Autistic doesn't make someone a mass murderer.

percentage of all murders committed by people with autism
No statistics. There was a study not too long ago that showed that autistic people have a slightly lower rate of violent crime than the general population. Citation is lying around somewhere. No spoons to get it.

autistic violent "home anymore"
No idea what you were trying to find. I can tell you though that we're not generally violent people, because, hey, autism doesn't create violence.

how often do autistics commit crimes later in life
Not as often as the general population, according to a study on "Asperger disorder and violence." Pretty sure that's the title of the paper. I don't remember the year or authors. If someone reminds me, I might upload a PDF that people can read.

has there ever been a mass murderer with aspergers
See "are mass murderers autistic" above.

autism mass shootings
See "are mass murderers autistic" above.

how many autistic people commit murders
See "percentage of all murders committed by people with autism" above.

are people with autism dangerous
Not any more or less in general than anyone else. Specific Autistics may be more aggressive than specific non-Autistics, but it's not a reflection on Autistic people in general.

how many of 2012 mass murderers had aspergers?
See "percentage of all murders committed by people with autism" above.

I'm sad.

I'm having difficulty forming words, and I have things to write and study. It's finals period. I have several pages to write about something tangentially related -- the abuse and torture of disabled people -- and I've got an exam coming up in one of the most ableist fields of all time. I scribbled out something to submit as an op-ed somewhere, and who knows, maybe they'll publish it. I wrote a short poem, an emotional response, really, to the shootings the other day.

I'm intentionally avoiding the news and the blogosphere and Tumblr and Facebook, really, too. I made the mistake of posting a link to one particularly good response to a problematic article on my own personal Facebook page, and it's been flooded with comments, only some of which are actually helpful and supportive. A lot of derailing going on there. Now I remember why I've been avoiding public conversations about this stuff.

21 comments:

I think some people do violent thinks after they have been hurt a lot in their own lifes. Some, not all. Wether autistic or not. So if you take into account how much someone has been hurt autistics aren't more violent.

But... all this thinking... is this or this group more or les group more violent is not right, I think. It's not wrong too... it's difficult to describe... It's just everybody simply does what he does, nothing else. It depends on his personal history, his personality.

I've been on image boards and news articles on the internet all day dispelling the association people are making between autism and violence, and explaining how there is no relationship. How depressing that something comes and pulls Aspergers back into public attention just as the new DSM is ushering it out the door, right? Anyway, I wish I could just hide somewhere until this all blows over too; it's been a depressing and extremely frustrating day. However, we don't have the luxury of being able to hide. If we hide, then who will spread the truth? It's a frustrating obligation, but it's people like us who have to make sure that we try out best to make sure that what is said about us is true, accurate, and appropriate-- otherwise, the only voices to be heard will be those of the people who threaten to perpetuate falsehoods.

Don't have much to offer; the past few days have been crushing. Just wanted to let you know that this stranger appreciates you and your work. I and others will do our best to help boost your signal over the rest of the noise. Thank you so much for what you do.

Wow. I am getting "autism violence statistics," "aspergers sandy hook," "sandy hook killer autism," which means the media did a really good job of linking us in the public mind with mass murder. My blog post is here: http://paulacdurbinwestbyautisticblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/mother-with-asperger-syndrome-grieves.html

I really appreciate your post here to counteract the media's hype about autism which is untrue. I feel like all of us on the spectrum need to stand up and voice our own thoughts about this issue with the media. Why does the media do this?

I think this might be the study you are looking for that was recently done, that indicates that the crime rate among individuals, studied in a 20 year longitudinal study, with ASD's, was slightly higher than half of the reported crime rate in the general population.

The full study is linked within the article linked above from the Simon's Foundation

"Myhre’s team investigated marital status, mortality and criminal records, and disability pension awards for 113 individuals who would meet contemporary criteria for autism. Of that number, 39 fall into the PDD-NOS category. More than half the participants — including 23 of the 39 with PDD-NOS — have an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 70 or less.

All were treated in the children’s unit at the National Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Oslo, Norway, between 1968 and 1988. The researchers tracked these participants using government-issued identification numbers.

They found that by age 22, 96 percent of the group had been awarded a disability pension from the government. Nearly all were unmarried — 99 percent of those with autistic disorder, compared with 92 percent of those with PDD-NOS. The crime rate for the group as a whole was little more than half that of the general population, although more individuals with PDD-NOS than autism had been convicted of a crime."

I've never killed anyone. Unless it was to defend myself or my family, I never would. It does hurt. We're always going to be treated differently. We're always going to be outcasts. We can't conform to what the world wants us to be, and quite honestly: why should we?

Re hiding: Of course, you must do what you have to do. But I agree with the other commenters who hope you don't. Yours is an important voice that should be heard. I hope you get those finals done and keep on writing. Thanks.

I think NTs are wary and suspicious of us because of the difficulties we have connecting with NTs. They have an instinctive mistrust of those who seem to stand apart from social networks. We give the impression of being beyond the control of society because we aren't really a part of its fabric or something. We are therefore viewed as dangerous.

Autistic Hoya strives to be

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Header Image Description

Photo by Kory Otto-Jacobs, taken March 1st, 2013 in Farragut Square Park, Washington, DC, United States, for the National Day of Mourning vigil for disabled people murdered by family members or caregivers. This is an annual event sponsored by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the National Council on Independent Living, and the American Association of People with Disabilities, and was originally organized by Zoe Gross in 2012 following the murder of 22-year-old autistic George Hodgins by his mother.

This is a cropped, horizontal banner style black and white photograph depicting one of the vigils and its participants. In the center foreground, there is the back of a person's head with short dark hair; this person is wearing a woolen winter coat with their shoulders and upper-back visible. Facing the camera in the midground, also facing the center-foreground person, are several people wearing winter coats and scarves, many holding cameras, video recorders, or phones. The leftmost person is a dark-skinned woman with long gray frizzy hair; she is wearing a collared woolen dark winter coat. Beside her is a lighter-skinned man with straight dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache; he is holding a camera or video recorder in his left gloved hand and is also wearing a collared dark winter coat. Beside him and a little behind him is a white person of ambiguous gender wearing a knitted hat and a dark two-toned windbreaker. Beside this person and a little in front of them is a darker-skinned man with braids pulled behind his head, also wearing a woolen dark winter coat, holding a video camera on a tripod. Beside this man is an older Asian woman wearing a light-colored baseball cap under the hood of a light-colored windbreaker. There are two light-skinned hands holding a camera above this woman's head. All of those people are on the viewer's left-hand side and to the left of the woman in the foreground. On the other side, from the left of the woman in the foreground, there is a young white man with light-colored hair falling a little over his face, also wearing a dark coat over a light-colored shirt. He is looking a bit upwards. Beside him is a white woman with medium-dark hair tucked under a felt cap, also wearing a light-colored scarf tucked into her dark-colored woolen winter coat. She is wearing gloves and is holding a large white poster with handwritten mixed-case text that reads "Benjamin Barnhard" on one line, with the second line below it unintelligible. Below the text on her poster is a photograph of a young white man with a darkish background. Beside this woman with the poster is another white woman with medium-colored bangs, wearing a hood/scarf thing wrapped around her head, and a dark-colored double-breasted winter woolen coat. In front of this woman is an older person with very light-colored hair and fair skin, seated. Behind this woman and beside the previous one is another white person with light-medium hair, glasses with a slight tint, and a puffy winter coat. In front of this person is an older white man with slightly wavy hair, also seated. Behind him are two people, one appears to be white and a man and his holding a camera, and then closer to the viewer is a Black man wearing a dark-colored coat, interpreting the speech into ASL. In the background behind all of the people, there are a few naked trees on the viewer's left, a streetlamp near center, and multi-story modernist office buildings to the center and viewer's right.

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